Nonwoven fabrics are desirable for use in a variety of products such as bandaging materials, garments, diapers, supportive clothing and personal hygiene products. Nonwoven fabrics that have high elongation are particularly desirable for various uses, including use as a component of a personal care fabric, because of their ability to conform to irregular shapes and to allow more freedom of body movements than do fabrics with limited extensibility.
One such nonwoven fabric known in the art is carded thermobonded nonwoven fabrics. Carded thermobonded fabrics are produced by forming a carded web of staple fibers and thermally bonding the web so that the staple fibers soften and fuse together to form a unitary structure. Carded thermobonded webs, however, typically exhibit limited elongation. To achieve increased elongation, prior techniques have added an elastomeric material to the product. However, elastomeric materials typically have a poor hand or feel, and thus elastic nonwovens can suffer from poor fabric aesthetics. Further, processing elastomeric can be difficult, resulting in breakage or elastic failure of the fibers or filaments during extrusion and drawing. In addition, elastomeric materials are costly.
Therefore, to produce products having high elongation without using elastomeric materials, alternative converting methods typically must be used. Most of these converting methods, however, involve multiple processes, and thus result in reduced volume and production efficiencies as compared with other converting processes. Accordingly, it would be desirable to efficiently produce nonwoven fabrics having good elongation and tensile properties using fewer converting steps and operation facilities.